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Wildlife Services Kills 2.7 Million Animals in 2016

Numbers are in for the amount of wildlife killed by Wildlife Services in 2016. The total amounted to 2.7 million wild animals exterminated including coyotes, wolves, beavers, prairie dogs, black bears, mountain lions, and thousands of other species. The Wildlife Services division budget for fiscal year 2016 was $106 million. In all, 415 wolves and 77,000 coyotes were poisoned, shot and trapped by the rouge agency with our tax dollars.

This branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has continued to kill millions of animals each year for decades. Wildlife Services mostly serves livestock interests. Our wildlife are killed so that ranchers and farmers can continue to graze their animals on public land at a fraction of the cost to taxpayers. It is time that we demand action to shut down the egregious practices of this agency. Poisoning, trapping, and shooting wolves and coyotes from aircraft is cruel and unacceptable. This agency claims to research non-lethal measures to prevent livestock losses, but seems to rarely employ those actions first. Wildlife Services could and should be a leader in the promotion of non-lethal practices for livestock producers. Instead, they are the leading wildlife killing agency who spends millions of our tax dollars unnecessarily exterminating a precious natural resource that most Americans wish to see alive. The number of coyotes killed by Wildlife Services is especially outrageous considering that there is scientific evidence that proves killing coyotes only leads to more coyotes because of compensatory reproduction by the individual coyotes that remain. This government agency has very little oversight and accountability. It is time that the American people demand the disbanding of Wildlife Services.